Is this the week the magic died for Boris Johnson?

What is really going on here? The via dolorosa Boris Johnson is trudging along is about more than Dominic Cummings’s actions and the Prime Minister’s refusal to acknowledge they were wrong, let alone ask the bloke for his ticket. The government’s Covid-19 messaging has been eviscerated, health guidance undermined, public goodwill forfeited and political capital amassed across ten months expended in a few days. The Prime Minister believes all this is worth it.

The 40 Conservative MPs who have called for Cummings to go do not understand why, nor does Scotland Office minister Douglas Ross, who resigned over the matter yesterday. Other Tory politicians privately despair at the high decadence of prolonging a political scandal in the middle of a national emergency. Many in the grassroots resent their party being turned into a human shield for someone who isn’t a Conservative. A former special adviser and longstanding party activist puts it like this: ‘All the angry, grieving people writing to MPs and the newspapers are being told Dom is exceptional and they just need to move on.